April 1974: They call him the Streak 

Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night was nominated for four Oscars at the 1974 Academy Awards, winning the award for Best Foreign Film. It’s a movie about moviemaking, as its on-screen cast and crew work through a never-ending series of professional and personal challenges to complete a film whose plot sounds hardly worth the effort: French newlywed brings his British wife home to meet the parents. She falls in love with his father, whom the son confronts on a busy street and shoots. 

Nearly everything that can go wrong with making the movie does, but that doesn’t make Day for Night some sort of zany slapstick comedy. It’s about adapting. When an actor dies in a car accident, it necessitates a late-night rewrite of the script. To assist a boozy actress who keeps forgetting her lines, the crew hides cue cards with her lines around the set, unseen by the camera. 

Truffaut, who directed the movie and plays the on-screen director as well – very meta for 1974 – pulls the camera back even further to show, very matter-of-factly, how filmmakers go about creating an illusion of reality. A water pipe over a fake window to simulate rain. The scaffolding actors must climb to film a balcony scene. Monster hoses that spray “snow.” The back-up cat that comes out when a first cat won’t drink milk from a saucer on cue. 

A meta Francois Truffaut at left 

The title Day for Night comes from a process whereby sequences filmed outdoors in daylight are shot with a filter to appear as if they are taking place at night, which takes on another meaning here as the film sheds light and insight around filmmaking. 

Right around this time, a Beatles bootleg began showing up in discerning record stores titled Sweet Apple Trax. It offered, in mostly clear sound, outtakes pirated from the filming of Let It Be, much of which would not be officially released by the band until some fifty years later. 

With the universe’s most famous rock band working through sketches of songs, trying out and discarding guitar parts, singing half-written lyrics, mumbling when no lyrics exist or messing around with different tempos, at the time it was a revelation, a fly on the wall perspective that none of us had ever experienced.

That’s the value bootleggers have always brought, pulling back the camera, or in this case unlocking the studio door – a record about making records. Bringing day to night. 

The top ten records for April 1974 aren’t a very inspiring bunch: 

1 BENNIE AND THE JETS –•– Elton John

2 HOOKED ON A FEELING –•– Blue Swede

3 TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) –•– MFSB

4 COME AND GET YOUR LOVE –•– Redbone

5 BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME –•– Gladys Knight and the Pips

6 SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS –•– John Denver

7 THE LORD’S PRAYER –•– Sister Janet Mead

8 OH MY MY –•– Ringo Starr

9 THE LOCO-MOTION –•– Grand Funk

10 SEASONS IN THE SUN –•– Terry Jacks 

Worth noting is this consecutive run of chart entries for the week ending April 13: 

82 — DAYBREAK –•– Nilsson

83 — SUNDOWN –•– Gordon Lightfoot

84 — THE STREAK –•– Ray Stevens 

Having “Sundown” follow “Daybreak” is kind of neat. “The Streak” was a novelty record with the great fortune of hitting the radio right as streaking hit its summit, the live broadcast of the 1974 Academy Awards. 

As the show was winding down to the big finale, Best Picture, David Niven is introducing Elizabeth Taylor just as the naked guy (Robert Opel, a photographer) runs onstage, setting up Niven’s famous retort, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was almost bound to happen. But isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?" (Opel didn’t have much life left after that night. He was murdered in 1979 during an attempted robbery). 

There has always been thought that the entire thing was staged. Like Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show, the camera was strategically placed so that we didn’t see anything below the streaker’s waist. Niven was a quick-witted type, but his ad lib appears too rehearsed and smooth. Watching him wait for the laughter to die down, he seems to be itching to pull the trigger on the punchline. 

Whether staged or not, Oscar night in 1974 was quite a slap in the face.